Face-Heel-Turn: Prologue
Jun. 22nd, 2011 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
roh_ficsPrologue
Periers, France
11 July1944
"It's not the bombs. You know?"
Jim looks up, surprised. It's not so much at the question. Sanders asks those all the time, though his flat New England accent and rich-boy way of saying things makes Jim wonder whether they're really ever questions. He nods, vaguely aware that Sanders doesn't really want an answer.
"It's not the bombs that kill you." Sanders' tone is matter-of-fact, and he lazily flicks a bit of ash off the end of his cigarette. "It's all the waiting."
His voice is the only sound in the bombed-out ruin they're waiting in, and nobody bothers to agree or disagree with him. It is very quiet here, almost a shock after the constant gunfire of the past few days. Sanders, Franks, Canzoneri and Jim himself are the only ones left of the unit that marched into Paris.
They showed up days before the actual siege, a sort of relief unit, but they've been together since training camp. They are a ragtag bunch of draftees and volunteers from the Fourth Infantry Division, and since their blood-soaked initiation at Utah Beach, they've lost half the unit already. Most died that first day in Normandy, and since then, every day, a few more have gone as they push their way to the heart of Vichy France. Every town and village they liberate is a bombed-out shell, and even though Jim isn't much given to sentiment, he can feel the pain of an old world that would have to be built again from scratch. He's surprised at how desperate the ache is at first, but on reflection, he decides these people who've lost their homes and their histories, they're pretty lucky. They get to erase the past and start all over. Jim figures he wouldn't mind a second chance like that himself.
In the meantime, there's still a war on, and the air is still, so thick with tension, Jim can feel its weight on his chest. He pushes away the discomfort, that awkward ball of fear in his stomach and gives his attention over to his unit mates. He doesn't have the gift of the gab, not like Sanders, who can make the most ordinary thing sound profound and intelligent. But Jim likes to watch people, the way they move, the way their eyes get when they're angry. He likes to listen, and this is a good thing, because in his experience, most men like to talk.
Franks never has much to say. At first, Jim decides this is because Franks is just shy, but as time goes by, as he sees the fury the man can unleash with just a few pulls of the trigger, he decides Franks' silence is a cover for his anger. Under the calm surface, he's in a boiling rage, and Jim thinks that’s fair. The Franks family hardware store is going under because of the war, and his mother is sick and he's not there to look after her. Then there are the rumors—horrible stories, sometimes from the newswire, sometimes not—of the terrible things the Nazis are doing to the Jews. That's when Jim decides it's probably good for Franks to be so angry. Angry men get things done.
Then there's Canzoneri. He reminds Jim of half the men he's known in his life, large, lumbering and—because they're usually mobsters—lethal. He talks more than Franks, but never says anything really important. It's mostly just about how he misses his girl and his buddies, and his baseball. Canzoneri is a baseball expert, knows everything there is to know about the sport. Jim wonders idly how he's involved with the mob. He might run numbers, maybe even a sports book. But Canzoneri's size and the manic look in his eyes keep Jim from ever asking, at least out loud.
Sanders is the one who talks the most. Jim has already learned more than he ever wanted to know about the man. He's thought about telling Sanders to shut up a million times, but he's a lieutenant, and Jim doesn't want to get busted for talking back to an officer. And Sanders' chatter is never boring. He talks about an entire world Jim has never experienced, except in the darkness of a movie theater, in the dime matinees he watched as a kid.
It is obvious Sanders is rich, even if he never actually talks about money. Jim knows he's the heir to one of the Northeast's biggest grocery empires. He knows Sanders finished up at Princeton just a few months before Pearl Harbor. Sanders looks the part, exactly the way Jim thinks a college dandy should look, like he was made to wear starched whites and wield a tennis racket instead of army green and a rifle. He has an easy manner, a way of talking and being that scares Jim a little. It reminds him there are some for whom the war is just another adventure, a sort of vacation from their real life, and Jim begins to hate Sanders just a little. The others, though, they sort of love Sanders, especially Canzoneri, who stares at Sanders in a desperate and hangdog sort of way. Every now and then, Jim wonders if all the talk of his girl back home isn't a sort of cover for what Canzoneri really wants. But he shrugs it off. There are worse things in this world that being a bit light in the loafers. Plus it's not like Sanders actually notices. He's usually too busy talking about himself.
"You got any smokes left?"
Franks' voice cuts into the silence and Jim nearly falls off the boulder of rubble he's been perched on for the last hour. He gives Franks a curious look, because it's the first time Franks has spoken in more than a day, but he gets just a shrug in response. Jim reaches into his boot and pulls out the half-smoked remnants of last week's cigarette rations, tossing it in Franks's direction.
The other man plucks it deftly out of the air, and turns it over between his fingers. "It's practically all gone!"
"It's all I got, pal."
Franks lights the thing and takes a long drag, looking almost happy. Jim hopes for a second that the other man will make conversation, but Franks slinks back into a corner and silence creeps up on them once more.
Jim's mind begins to wander. In the quiet of the place, his brain conjures up images—memories of things and places he hasn't actually thought on in a long time. There's the sight of his mother's sausages, fat and salty. There's the smell of wood, green and sharp when you first cut it, dry and bristling just before you throw it on the fire. There's the feel of new grass, all dewy-wet in the morning. He closes his eyes and shakes his head. Those kind of things are for idiots—idiots and losers and no-account time wasters who will never amount to anything. Not like Jim. Not like Sanders.
As if he's reading Jim's thoughts, Sanders calls out in his direction.
"You know something? I'm a bastard."
Jim chuckles in spite of being just a bit cheesed off at Sanders. "Yeah, El Tee, I could've told you that."
"No, a real bastard. Like my mother and father weren't married."
Jim raises an eyebrow. Now there's an admission men don't make very often, especially not rich boys like Sanders. He waits expectantly, but keeps an indifferent look on his face. There's really no point in Sanders knowing just how interested Jim is in his life.
"Yeah, my father—the real one—is some kind of prince."
Franks hisses and stubs out the cigarette. "A prince. Really?" His tone is cynical, edged with exhaustion and tension, and suddenly, Jim is tired of it all. He wants to throw something at Franks, but decides against it.
"Listen, you. Just let them man tell his story. It's something to talk about. Kills time. You know?"
Franks shrugs in an indifferent sort of way and Jim turns his attention back to Sanders. "Go on, lieutenant."
"Ok, so maybe not a prince. But an aristocrat. A baron. Lord Yeardley."
It's Canzoneri's turn to butt in. "That's kind of a stupid name, isn't it? I swear I've seen that name—Yardley—on some fancy girls' soap or powder or something."
Sanders stares him down, and after a moment or two, Canzoneri caves, looking beaten as he stares at the tops of his boots. Jim is impressed. It's not often that a man as big and scary as Canzoneri is at the wrong end of a beatdown, and Jim relishes it. Stupid Dago, he thinks, and then pushes the thought out of his head. It's uncharitable and Canzoneri is his buddy.
Sanders is still watching Canzoneri, with his lips closed tight, and a vein popping in his neck, about as close to real anger as Jim has ever seen him. He tries to step into the breach, but abruptly, Sanders whole manner changes. He starts to chuckle and in a minute, it's turned into full-on laughter. Canzoneri joins in, his laugh just a nervous titter at first. Jim is stunned by this, because he thinks it means there's more going on between Sanders and Canzoneri than any of them has known.
He looks over at Franks for confirmation, but the Jew is staring off into the corner, not even paying attention, so Jim turns back to the other men. "So Lord fancy powder?"
Sanders smiles. "Yeah, but it isn't spelled the same. It's Y-e-a-rdley." He shrugs. "Ah, I guess it sounds the same.
"Anyway, I'm 18 and about to go to Princeton, when my mother tells me. She says she's lied to me all these years about how my father died when I was a baby. She tells me I'm the son of this English lord, and that he wants to meet me.
"So I do. I'm expecting some old silver-haired gent who's pulling a scam on my mother. But no. He's for real.
"He apologizes for ignoring me all these years, tells me there were 'unavoidable circumstances' but that he wants me to look him up. In England, when I'm done with 'university.'" Sanders puts on a fake British accent at the end of the sentence and Jim is struck by how perfect Sanders would be in the part of the English lord, with his proper manners and his Princeton education. Maybe some people are just born like that, Jim thinks.
"So that's what I'm doing when all this is over, boys. I'm heading over to Bucksley, England. I'll be a baron before Hitler's in his grave. You heard it here first."
And as soon as it began, Sanders story is over, and silence descends on them again. Jim's mind is awhirl though. He can't decide if Sanders is telling the truth, since at least half of his chatter is just boast. But after a while, he decides there are too many details that Sanders couldn't know unless they were true. What a life, what luck!
He's barely had a chance to think his next thought before they hear the whizzing sound, the familiar scream of artillery as it shoots through the sky and comes right at you. "Take cover, take cover!" He hears Sanders voice cutting through the rubble, yelling at them to get out of the way. Jim scrambles to his feet and starts running, but his shoulder hits the wall, and he crumples to the ground just as the old house is hit.
He hears the stone explode around him, the sound of Franks' hissy breath, of Canzoneri yelling at him to get up. Snatches of his life come to him, and he acts without thinking. His hands move, his legs move, but blackness corners him, and the last thing he sees before it takes over is Sanders' lying next to him, eyes wide open, staring at the sky.
It was the bombs after all.
Periers, France
11 July1944
"It's not the bombs. You know?"
Jim looks up, surprised. It's not so much at the question. Sanders asks those all the time, though his flat New England accent and rich-boy way of saying things makes Jim wonder whether they're really ever questions. He nods, vaguely aware that Sanders doesn't really want an answer.
"It's not the bombs that kill you." Sanders' tone is matter-of-fact, and he lazily flicks a bit of ash off the end of his cigarette. "It's all the waiting."
His voice is the only sound in the bombed-out ruin they're waiting in, and nobody bothers to agree or disagree with him. It is very quiet here, almost a shock after the constant gunfire of the past few days. Sanders, Franks, Canzoneri and Jim himself are the only ones left of the unit that marched into Paris.
They showed up days before the actual siege, a sort of relief unit, but they've been together since training camp. They are a ragtag bunch of draftees and volunteers from the Fourth Infantry Division, and since their blood-soaked initiation at Utah Beach, they've lost half the unit already. Most died that first day in Normandy, and since then, every day, a few more have gone as they push their way to the heart of Vichy France. Every town and village they liberate is a bombed-out shell, and even though Jim isn't much given to sentiment, he can feel the pain of an old world that would have to be built again from scratch. He's surprised at how desperate the ache is at first, but on reflection, he decides these people who've lost their homes and their histories, they're pretty lucky. They get to erase the past and start all over. Jim figures he wouldn't mind a second chance like that himself.
In the meantime, there's still a war on, and the air is still, so thick with tension, Jim can feel its weight on his chest. He pushes away the discomfort, that awkward ball of fear in his stomach and gives his attention over to his unit mates. He doesn't have the gift of the gab, not like Sanders, who can make the most ordinary thing sound profound and intelligent. But Jim likes to watch people, the way they move, the way their eyes get when they're angry. He likes to listen, and this is a good thing, because in his experience, most men like to talk.
Franks never has much to say. At first, Jim decides this is because Franks is just shy, but as time goes by, as he sees the fury the man can unleash with just a few pulls of the trigger, he decides Franks' silence is a cover for his anger. Under the calm surface, he's in a boiling rage, and Jim thinks that’s fair. The Franks family hardware store is going under because of the war, and his mother is sick and he's not there to look after her. Then there are the rumors—horrible stories, sometimes from the newswire, sometimes not—of the terrible things the Nazis are doing to the Jews. That's when Jim decides it's probably good for Franks to be so angry. Angry men get things done.
Then there's Canzoneri. He reminds Jim of half the men he's known in his life, large, lumbering and—because they're usually mobsters—lethal. He talks more than Franks, but never says anything really important. It's mostly just about how he misses his girl and his buddies, and his baseball. Canzoneri is a baseball expert, knows everything there is to know about the sport. Jim wonders idly how he's involved with the mob. He might run numbers, maybe even a sports book. But Canzoneri's size and the manic look in his eyes keep Jim from ever asking, at least out loud.
Sanders is the one who talks the most. Jim has already learned more than he ever wanted to know about the man. He's thought about telling Sanders to shut up a million times, but he's a lieutenant, and Jim doesn't want to get busted for talking back to an officer. And Sanders' chatter is never boring. He talks about an entire world Jim has never experienced, except in the darkness of a movie theater, in the dime matinees he watched as a kid.
It is obvious Sanders is rich, even if he never actually talks about money. Jim knows he's the heir to one of the Northeast's biggest grocery empires. He knows Sanders finished up at Princeton just a few months before Pearl Harbor. Sanders looks the part, exactly the way Jim thinks a college dandy should look, like he was made to wear starched whites and wield a tennis racket instead of army green and a rifle. He has an easy manner, a way of talking and being that scares Jim a little. It reminds him there are some for whom the war is just another adventure, a sort of vacation from their real life, and Jim begins to hate Sanders just a little. The others, though, they sort of love Sanders, especially Canzoneri, who stares at Sanders in a desperate and hangdog sort of way. Every now and then, Jim wonders if all the talk of his girl back home isn't a sort of cover for what Canzoneri really wants. But he shrugs it off. There are worse things in this world that being a bit light in the loafers. Plus it's not like Sanders actually notices. He's usually too busy talking about himself.
"You got any smokes left?"
Franks' voice cuts into the silence and Jim nearly falls off the boulder of rubble he's been perched on for the last hour. He gives Franks a curious look, because it's the first time Franks has spoken in more than a day, but he gets just a shrug in response. Jim reaches into his boot and pulls out the half-smoked remnants of last week's cigarette rations, tossing it in Franks's direction.
The other man plucks it deftly out of the air, and turns it over between his fingers. "It's practically all gone!"
"It's all I got, pal."
Franks lights the thing and takes a long drag, looking almost happy. Jim hopes for a second that the other man will make conversation, but Franks slinks back into a corner and silence creeps up on them once more.
Jim's mind begins to wander. In the quiet of the place, his brain conjures up images—memories of things and places he hasn't actually thought on in a long time. There's the sight of his mother's sausages, fat and salty. There's the smell of wood, green and sharp when you first cut it, dry and bristling just before you throw it on the fire. There's the feel of new grass, all dewy-wet in the morning. He closes his eyes and shakes his head. Those kind of things are for idiots—idiots and losers and no-account time wasters who will never amount to anything. Not like Jim. Not like Sanders.
As if he's reading Jim's thoughts, Sanders calls out in his direction.
"You know something? I'm a bastard."
Jim chuckles in spite of being just a bit cheesed off at Sanders. "Yeah, El Tee, I could've told you that."
"No, a real bastard. Like my mother and father weren't married."
Jim raises an eyebrow. Now there's an admission men don't make very often, especially not rich boys like Sanders. He waits expectantly, but keeps an indifferent look on his face. There's really no point in Sanders knowing just how interested Jim is in his life.
"Yeah, my father—the real one—is some kind of prince."
Franks hisses and stubs out the cigarette. "A prince. Really?" His tone is cynical, edged with exhaustion and tension, and suddenly, Jim is tired of it all. He wants to throw something at Franks, but decides against it.
"Listen, you. Just let them man tell his story. It's something to talk about. Kills time. You know?"
Franks shrugs in an indifferent sort of way and Jim turns his attention back to Sanders. "Go on, lieutenant."
"Ok, so maybe not a prince. But an aristocrat. A baron. Lord Yeardley."
It's Canzoneri's turn to butt in. "That's kind of a stupid name, isn't it? I swear I've seen that name—Yardley—on some fancy girls' soap or powder or something."
Sanders stares him down, and after a moment or two, Canzoneri caves, looking beaten as he stares at the tops of his boots. Jim is impressed. It's not often that a man as big and scary as Canzoneri is at the wrong end of a beatdown, and Jim relishes it. Stupid Dago, he thinks, and then pushes the thought out of his head. It's uncharitable and Canzoneri is his buddy.
Sanders is still watching Canzoneri, with his lips closed tight, and a vein popping in his neck, about as close to real anger as Jim has ever seen him. He tries to step into the breach, but abruptly, Sanders whole manner changes. He starts to chuckle and in a minute, it's turned into full-on laughter. Canzoneri joins in, his laugh just a nervous titter at first. Jim is stunned by this, because he thinks it means there's more going on between Sanders and Canzoneri than any of them has known.
He looks over at Franks for confirmation, but the Jew is staring off into the corner, not even paying attention, so Jim turns back to the other men. "So Lord fancy powder?"
Sanders smiles. "Yeah, but it isn't spelled the same. It's Y-e-a-rdley." He shrugs. "Ah, I guess it sounds the same.
"Anyway, I'm 18 and about to go to Princeton, when my mother tells me. She says she's lied to me all these years about how my father died when I was a baby. She tells me I'm the son of this English lord, and that he wants to meet me.
"So I do. I'm expecting some old silver-haired gent who's pulling a scam on my mother. But no. He's for real.
"He apologizes for ignoring me all these years, tells me there were 'unavoidable circumstances' but that he wants me to look him up. In England, when I'm done with 'university.'" Sanders puts on a fake British accent at the end of the sentence and Jim is struck by how perfect Sanders would be in the part of the English lord, with his proper manners and his Princeton education. Maybe some people are just born like that, Jim thinks.
"So that's what I'm doing when all this is over, boys. I'm heading over to Bucksley, England. I'll be a baron before Hitler's in his grave. You heard it here first."
And as soon as it began, Sanders story is over, and silence descends on them again. Jim's mind is awhirl though. He can't decide if Sanders is telling the truth, since at least half of his chatter is just boast. But after a while, he decides there are too many details that Sanders couldn't know unless they were true. What a life, what luck!
He's barely had a chance to think his next thought before they hear the whizzing sound, the familiar scream of artillery as it shoots through the sky and comes right at you. "Take cover, take cover!" He hears Sanders voice cutting through the rubble, yelling at them to get out of the way. Jim scrambles to his feet and starts running, but his shoulder hits the wall, and he crumples to the ground just as the old house is hit.
He hears the stone explode around him, the sound of Franks' hissy breath, of Canzoneri yelling at him to get up. Snatches of his life come to him, and he acts without thinking. His hands move, his legs move, but blackness corners him, and the last thing he sees before it takes over is Sanders' lying next to him, eyes wide open, staring at the sky.
It was the bombs after all.
